Gov’t admits to shortcomings in Five-Year Plan progress

The mid-term review of the government’s first Five-Year Development Plan indicated that lawmaking and the region’s construction sector had both faced a series of challenges between 2016 and 2018, and thereby became two of the city’s least successful sectors in terms of achieving their targets outlined in the plan.

“Some works that did not reach the expected goals are mainly reflected in the improvement [amendment] of the bills and the construction of works. The Macau SAR government is aware that there are shortcomings in government actions and [will] make every effort to improve the situation,” the government statement read.

The MSAR government pledged to strengthen interdepartmental cooperation in the construction of the governance regime and amending laws by improving and optimizing the coordination of legislative production, amongst others.

As cited in the report, the government also pledged that communication between project stakeholders would be strengthened and infrastructure construction would be accelerated.

Between 2016 and 2018, the annual execution rate regarding tasks outlined in the Five-Year Development Plan was approximately 90%, according to the mid-term evaluation issued by the government on Wednesday.

The 90% includes improvements to traffic systems, environmental protection indicators and the development of the gaming and non-gaming industries.

In terms of gaming, the report highlighted that the industry maintained healthy development between 2016 to 2018.

Although the Five-Year Development Plan did not list out its targets or limits for the gross gaming revenue performance of gaming operators, it listed its aspirations for the sector.

According to the plan, the government will “not pursue expansion in scale, but focus on improving quality and utilize existing modern gaming tourism building clusters to facilitate development of non-gaming elements.”

The mid-term review noted that non-gaming revenue amounted to a proportion of 9.97% of the total revenue of the sector in 2018, slightly lower than the figures in 2016 and 2017, which were 10.7% and 10.36% respectively.

However, the report said that it had already exceeded expectations, citing that the plan only mentioned a goal of at least 9% in terms of non-gaming revenue.

The report also noted that the government had concluded its consultation on the gaming industry, regarding the rules regulating junkets, gaming machines and equipment supply.

Meanwhile, in terms of progress on the city’s health system infrastructure, the sector only achieved 51% of its 80% completion goal.

The shortfall was mainly due to the delays in the construction of the Islands District Medical Complex.

‘The foundation works of the six blocks of the first phase of the Islands District Medical Complex have already been completed and construction work has begun on the upper Nursing Institute,” the report explained.

“The demolition of the first phase of the building [and] of the complementary public health boarding school were completed, and demolition works for phase two were already completed in January 2018,” it added.

Furthermore, the government pledged to improve the SAR’s “social security system, housing, healthcare, education, human resources training, and prevention and reduction of disasters.”

The government also mentioned that it would aim for improvements regarding the quality of convention and exhibition activities.